We ought to give thanks for all fortune: it is is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.

Havelock Ellis

They were saying computers deal with numbers. This was absolutely nonsense. Computers deal with arbitrary information of any kind.

Ted Nelson

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

Pete Townshend

Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you: you must acquire it.

Sudie Back

It is amazing how you can surround yourself with so many people you can call friends, and yet actually only have one or two real ones.

Jerry Grant Blakeney

Anytime you ride against the best in the world, it becomes a learning process.

Bonnie Blair

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

Victor Hugo

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming

Anon., various versions of this

This could never be a crime in any society which deems himself enlightened.

Jack Kevorkian

With the perverse logic of a degenerate gambler he figured God was testing his faith.

Mario Puzo, Inside Las Vegas

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

William Hazlitt